


Flash

by Dustbunnygirl



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-26
Updated: 2008-03-26
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8005720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dustbunnygirl/pseuds/Dustbunnygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They say, before you die, your life flashes before your eyes...</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flash

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** Flash, 5 of 10  
>  **Prompt:** Farewell, [the 10s](http://dustbunnygirl.livejournal.com/244235.html) challenge.  
>  **Fandom:** Torchwood  
>  **Pairing:** Jack/Ianto  
>  **Rating:** R  
>  **Word count:** 1,351  
>  **Warnings:** Spoilers for 2.11 (Fragments), 1.05 (Cyberwoman), 1.06 (Countrycide), 1.08 (They Keep Killing Suzie), 1.10 (Out of Time), and 1.13 (End of Days).  
>  **Disclaimer:** I own nothing. I’ve borrowed my toys from Auntie Beeb and Uncle Rusty’s toy box and fully plan on eventually giving them back someday, when I’m tired of them. won't be my fault if they're broken, though...  
> 

"We're relieving you of your command, Captain! We're opening that Rift and getting back what we lost!"

"You wanna be in charge, Owen? You gotta have significantly bigger balls."

The gunshots rip through the Hub like a razor tearing open skin, like the hole tunneling through Jack's forehead, spilling his blood over the floor. The last two explosions are unnecessary; everything alive and raging and beautiful in Jack switches off the minute the first bullet tears through his skull. I can see it in the way he falls, like a puppet let loose of its strings or a child's balloon pricked with a pin. The flurry of movement and sound from the second before ceases as shock seeps in, as our Captain hits the floor with a boneless, empty thud. Time that seemed too quick before, frantic and urgent and laced with desperation, slows. My arms and legs feel weighted when I move as if the air's turned to concrete and it's drying around me with every step. When I speak, the words sound stretched and thick. Life is a record player suddenly playing on the wrong speed.

"What have you done?" I ask as I sink next to the body, but it's rhetorical. My accusation doesn't need an answer. The truth of what he's done - what **we've** done - is lying lifeless and cold in front of me.

_Oh, God, what have we done?_

There's warmth yet to him, but he already feels colder - too cold. The shocked expression he wears will stay with him forever, frozen by time and death and the morgue freezers he'll spend his eternity in. I'll carry the same look forever as well, just at the back of my eyes, waiting for me to close them so it can haunt my every dream. I will always remember that look. No amount of Retcon could take that away. Some things Fate and memory are too cruel to let you forget.

They always say, in the moment before death, your entire life flashes before you in an instantaneous, frantic kaleidoscope of fragmented memories; broken seconds strung together like mismatched beads on a gigantic abacus, counted off in quick succession, tallying up the sum of your existence. Kneeling here, Jack's blood soaking into the knees of my slacks and his eyes staring dull and empty at the ceiling overhead, it's me that Fate torments with flashbacks and snapshots that pass by too quickly for me to grab them and hold on to:

 _…Watching his great coat flap in a self-made breeze as he tussles with a Weevil in the park. I wait in the shadows, anxious for an opening and scared one won't come. Worse than the fear I won't be needed, won't make the necessary impression, is the odd twinge in my gut as I stand transfixed by the show before me - no, the man before me - so full of life and light that I'm drawn like the proverbial moth to the dancing flame and by God, a small part of me is already willing and desperate to get burned..._  
  
…Watching his finger pull back on the Webley's trigger again and again, sprays of red erupting from the girl that isn't Lisa - but somehow is - as each bullet sinks through her skin. His isn't the only gun firing but it's the only one I see. My brain can't separate the way his hand wraps around the barrel from how it fondles me to frantic arousal when the Hub is dark and quiet and Lisa is (was) sleeping just two floors beneath us. There is a moment when need flares up next to the grief and pain and hatred and guilt and shame and I swear I can taste his breath and feel his fingers' rhythmic squeeze around my flesh. And then the one piece of my mind not shattered into a million jagged pieces remembers the sound of gunfire and screams and I'm standing beside my girlfriend's corpse, twice over, surrounded by her pooling blood and a stranger's and four sets of unfriendly, accusatory eyes. But all I see, even now, is him. His eyes burn with hatred and betrayal and I just repeat the same words, over and over in my head, as I pull my eyes away from his disapproval and sink to the floor beside Lisa: I hate you, I hate you…just pull the trigger already, there has to be one bullet in there left for me.

Fix me…

…Watching him watching me across a camp table, Owen's laughter and Gwen's disdain just muffled noise I try to ignore. I haven't decided yet if he's waiting to watch me snap into a million pieces or to try to stab him in the back. I vowed I'd watch him die but when I close my eyes - at night, when I blink, when I close them to rub away sleep or exhaustion or tears - all I see is the arch of his back, the crane of his neck, the way the muscles in his arms go taut in the second before oblivion. Sometimes Lisa is standing in the shadows and I can feel the weight of her disappointment threaten to smother me. He's a monster, but I can't stop. I hate him, but it doesn't make the images or the tight knot of want in my belly go away.

I look down so he can't watch me shatter, and so he won't know that he's the rocks I break upon…

…Watching the second hand tick away on the stopwatch in my left hand while my right buries itself in his hair. No matter how hard I grip or scratch or pull he won't alter his pace and his hands on my hips keep me pressed into his chair. I drag my eyes away from the passing seconds, stare instead at the slow and tortuous bob of his head and marvel at how it matches the steady thrum of the second hand as it echoes in my ears. I don't think about Suzie slowly frosting over again below us or how many other bodies lie cold and still in the morgue's vast caverns. Don't think about how there will be a drawer with my name on it someday, and Gwen's, and Owen's, and Toshiko's and even Jack's or how it will never matter how we really die because in the end the cause of death will always be "Death by Torchwood," one way or another. I listen to the tick of the watch and Jack's muffled breathing and my soft, needful moans and whimpers instead. Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven…

…Watching the light in his office burn long past midnight Christmas Eve, shadows and ghosts and living souls all still. Soft music, scratchy with time, drifts down on air that still smells of car exhaust and hopelessness and death. I should be home, but I'm here watching him instead, silent sentinel keeping watch over the soul of the non-departed while it grieves over the one it couldn't save. I take him coffee because he won't sleep anyway, even if I deprive him of the caffeine or slip him hot milk instead. He stares at the cup as if it's something foreign; as if it's not there and all he sees is empty space and a dead man's eyes. I turn to go but his voice stops me as surely as a hand at my arm would.

"Stay. Please, just…stay."

I close the door and lock myself in with the ghosts…

Watching…always watching, even as he falls. The light leaves his eyes and his chest goes still and why is everyone so calm? He's dead - Jack's dead! - and the world hasn't stopped like it should've after all. I look up; Gwen's pulling Jack's gun out of Owen's hand and I'm sure if I blink the shock I see in the doctor's eyes will all be my imagination.

Somewhere, deep in the cold heart of the Hub, I imagine Suzie laughing as she waits for her newest neighbor to move in. 


End file.
